The Mozilla Foundation

Termination of the Community Edition Builds

April 7, 2009

This was the page for the Community Editions Policy. However, after some discussion, it was clear the program needs were being addressed elsewhere and the cost outweighed the utility. As of April 7, 2009, new builds are no longer authorized under the Community Edition program.

Localized Builds:
We have an established localization (“l10n”) program with more support and infrastructure to help our localizers. Under the l10n program the localized versions of our products are easier to create so the community rarely uses Community Edition builds for this purpose.

Partnership Builds:
If you’re interested in creating and distributing customized versions of our branded products to help promote your add-on, products, or service offerings, please visit our Partners Page or contact us at partners@mozilla.com or bizdev@mozilla.com to discuss your proposed modifications.

Unbranded Builds:
If you want to distribute a modified version of a Mozilla product, you may still do so without permission from us as long as you do not use our trademarks or logos.

We believe that the above provide options for you to distribute customized version of our products, while allowing us to ensure the quality of those builds using our trademarks. In addition to the fact that the Community Edition builds no longer served their original purpose, such builds contained unknown additional software or were based on out-dated versions of our product.

Any Community Editions builds created and distributed prior to April 7, 2009, and making the permitted changes, may continue to be distributed and call themselves “Community Edition.” For these existing builds, there is no change to the long standing policy:

If it is a Community Edition of Mozilla Firefox or Thunderbird and you want to use the name Firefox of Thunderbird, it must use the names “Firefox Community Edition” or “Thunderbird Community Edition” to identify the software. The words “Community Edition” may be translated.

These builds cannot be branded and distributed as “Mozilla Firefox,” may not use the Mozilla name or trademarked Mozilla logos, and must be identified as Community Editions. For example, “Mozilla Firefox Community Edition” is not allowed.

We may require individuals or teams to stop distributing these builds in the future if they are redistributing software with low quality and efforts to remedy the situation have not succeeded.